Andy, the ride is looking nice! Congrats on the new place! Good luck with getting everything finished for DATR. I wish I could come, but I have family plans and my B5 needs too much love to even show up there this year.

Been a little while since an update over here and with these little teases of warm weather I'm itching to get some more work done on the car.

First, I've got some new stuff going on. I found a company in the UK that is going to chrome some stuff for me. The pics below are not the actual items I have, but some previews of some of the stuff I'm getting back from them.

I got a set of Polished Porsche 944 door handles with new VW gaskets on.

And I just got a very 80's 944 steering wheel with new leather on it.

Of course I also picked up that set of Phonedials from Rick. I couldn't pass up that price for staggered low offset wheels. I'll be getting those refinished at some point soon here too.

I'm off to Australia and Tasmania in a couple weeks so I'm putting off getting the seats and door cards recovered until I find out how badly I damaged my savings on the trip. I don't anticipate it being to over budget so we should be good to go on that in March.

On top of that... I've been having naughty thoughts about the suspension and where to take that, but I'll leave that until I have made a decision.

For archival purposes here's the pics from DATR 2007 with thanks to the photographers:

Haha! And you can't see the two more stacks behind those with my Longbeach's, Teardrop's and the set of BBS RC's. Seven sets of wheels for two cars... two of which I can't use because the Longbeach's are to small for the mk4's front brakes and the Teardrops are to small for the mk2's front brakes.

It looks like it would be pretty easy to insulate based on the pictures I see. I am going to do mine this spring and also sheetrock it. I have to wire a few more electrical outlets, so that tying those into my fusebox is the only thing I hesitate to do myself. I know how to do it, just not if I would be doing it to code.

I put in the TT pedals, shows the removed large spline adapter for the Porsche wheel which fits like it was made for it, and... the beginning of something else that's missing from the interior. Stay tuned

They are going to make me custom sized adapters for the Phonedials.$300 for all four.

Not bad at all since the ones I have are total rubbish and H&R only makes one size (25mm) for 4x100.

I'm getting 28mm for the fronts which is the same as my crap ones and wider 35mm rears to fill out those arches a little better.

Other new stuff going on soon include a new grille, new front badge, new BMW seals for the pop-outs and more...

Jon, if you're still interested in the Phonedials Rick sold me, let me know. Now that I have these custom adapters coming in, I'm going to stick with the ones I've already got. I'll just be looking for the same price he sold them to me for. ($200)

I think I am gonna pass on the phone dials, as much as I want them, I am pretty much as the end of the road on the MINI modifications...I have a new project in mind, and the phone dials won't fit into that at all.

Picked up a new axle from Todd and Randy yesterday. New one this time so hopefully even with the car lowered like it is, it will last more than 100 miles...

While I was there I figured i'd slip next door and pick up some other stuff that I installed yesterday. Still have some work to do on another dash I got for her. I've got the same chrome-ish stripe that will fit into the slot for the red stripe on the dash to make that match to help complete the look.

And got a new grille in the works. Still needs some adjustments here and there, maybe some more sanding and painting... it was a serious POS when i got it. I think it helps liven up the front of the car which looked too plain to me with the 4 bar badgeless I had on their before.